Hot gas generators are also known as combustors and are employed for a number of purposes. For example, they are frequently utilized to generate gases of combustion for driving gas turbine engines.
Early gas turbine engines commonly used swirl stabilized flames employing so-called swirl fuel pressure injection. As attempts were made to operate such turbines at higher and higher engine pressure ratios as, for example, in excess of 10 to 1 or more, such injectors produced high exhaust smoke. As a consequence, swirl air blast fuel injection was developed. Swirl air blast fuel injection is in common use today and eliminates the smoke problems that occurred in the early turbines. However, the elimination of smoke was not without an undesirable side effect, specifically, a loss in flame stability and a severe reduction in the ability to reliably start the turbine engine at high altitudes. The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.